The 7th

Chapter 1

"Blleeeehhhh!!!! Bleeeeehhhh!!!!! Bleeehhhh!!!!"

"Fuuuuuuuu you stfupid mofffer.... Sonnofffffabishhh" my muffled voice came from beneath the pillow where I had hidden my head the night before. It was a common habit of mine. I like to wake up in the dark because any light just increased the pain from the hangover I always had. My hand flailed out from under the blanket blindly searching for the damnable alarm clock.

"Bllleeeehhhh!!!! Bleeeehhhh!!! Bleeehh...." The last bleehhh was cut short by my fist smashing down on the snooze button on top of the thing. I will never understand why they couldn't have made alarm clocks with a more pleasing wake up tone. Like, I don't know, a soft feminine voice whispering "Time to get up Tim, you gorgeous handsome man. You need to get up so that the world may enjoy seeing the epitome of what the world has to offer in the perfect god like man." Yea, that would be better. Cause then I could persuade myself to get up by arguing "who am I to deprive the world of all of this."

I rolled out of bed and stumbled to my sink, which was not in my bathroom as I technically didn't have a bathroom. I lived in the upper floors of a complex in one of those flat type apartments. You know the ones where everything is kind of in one room. No walls really, just like an area where all your living room shit goes, another where all your kitchen mess is at, and then a corner where you put your bed and bathroom. The toilet did at least have a little closet type thing around it. There had been some awkward moments revolving around that toilet, a dinner date, and a bean burrito but we won't get into that right now.

Wiping the smears off the mirror I realized why they don't make alarm clocks that say those sweet things to me. Because they would all of be lies. Standing six feet flat I was nothing short of average. My sandy blonde averagely straight hair was in mats and sticking up in all directions, my spotty average beard was just that, shaggy and reddish in color and my five o'clock shadow looked more like a five-day shade. I looked rough to say the least, but this was the best I had to offer most days so I splashed a little water on my face, popped my two tiny little prescribed pills, donned a ball cap, grabbed the keys to my bike and left the flat.

Let me stop you before you let your mind roam to far. You're thinking "Oh shit! He just left the house with nothing but a ball cap and a smile!" While there are some events well in my past where I was seen in the streets of my junior college town wearing little more than that I have put those days behind me. A fact I am entirely proud of. No. I didn't leave the house wearing nothing but a ball cap and a smile. I just wore what I had on when I passed out the night before. It was my basic everyday attire. Jeans, Levi 527 because that's what real men wear, a t-shirt, something with a graphic on it. Today was a Star Wars themed shirt with Han Solo in profile, pistol drawn, and text reading "Damn right I shot first!" And a pair of old busted down cowboy boots. Before you ask, no I was not a cowboy and did not profess to be. I can ride a horse and I did grow up raising cattle on a farm but I didn't wear a cowboy hat or belt buckles and spurs nor did I carry a colt 45 revolver and to me those are the things that identify you as a cowboy. Real cowboys don't exist anymore. There are no Doc Holidays or Wyatt Erps. Mostly there are just a bunch of skinny jean flat billed cap wearing individuals who spend daddy's money driving jacked up dually's pretending to be or wanting to be called cowboys but not wanting to put in the work it took to earn the right to carry that name. No, I wasn't a cowboy. I didn't wear spurs or cowboy hats or carry a revolver. I carried instead a Smith and Wesson M & P 9mm. Thus, completing the fact that I am not a cowboy and the pistol also completing my attire.

My flat was four floors up in the complex, nearly the tallest building in town second only to the courthouse, and we had no elevator so it was the stairs every morning. Just like every morning I passed by the neighbor, Mrs. Macgonahugh, and her stray black cat she called Smokey. She fed that cat religiously every morning just outside her door at 7:48 A.M. She fed him a can of Sunkist Tuna Fish and everyone knew it because the smell of that tuna covered the whole floor she lived on, my floor, and the two below it. I knew she fed the cat at 7:48 each morning because generally this is when I was leaving. I left at 7:48 each morning because I was supposed to be at work by 7:30. So if feeding that cat was Mrs. Macgonahugh's religion, being late and pissing off my boss was mine. I made it to the stairwell and started down.